Voltage
by Raggedpelt
Summary: A short one-shot fic written from Ford's POV while he works down in his basement lab. It takes place right after "The Last Mabelcorn".


There wasn't much time.

Deep beneath the Mystery Shack, Ford was poring over his notes and reference materials. He had to find something, _anything_ , that they could use against Bill. The Shack itself was a safe place, but they couldn't stay inside forever. Stanley had wisely been stashing food away for the apocalypse, but they couldn't live on brown meat and instant noodles indefinitely. Not without dying of scurvy, anyway.

The first thing he needed was a way to protect Stanley and the kids from Bill's intrusions. That computer would have worked, but now it was damaged beyond repair and Ford didn't know how to fix it. Project Mentem had been Fiddleford's baby, not his. He didn't even entirely understand the theoretical basis behind how it encrypted thoughts, let alone how the device actually did it.

Fids had once offered to explain it to him, but he refused to learn. At the time, he thought that if HE didn't know how it worked, then BILL couldn't find out, either. How naive; that had been wishful thinking of the highest degree. Due to that foolishness, now he was stuck with a broken machine and hadn't even the most rudimentary idea of how to repair it.

Ford picked up a coin off of his desk, and idly rolled it along his knuckles on it's edge. That was a good way to keep his dexterity up, and he found it calming. He could try to go the metal plate route, but... that would be nightmarish even if it went well. Having his own plate installed had been six different kinds of headache, and all of them at once. Turns out, most doctors won't just put a plate in your head because you ask them to. Worse, if you try to explain that it's to keep away a triangular dream demon that keeps breaking into your mind and controlling your thoughts, instead of a metal plate you get a psych referral.

He had tried to get Fiddleford to help him, but to no avail. His friend didn't even seem to recognize him at that point. Ford had ended up putting the plate in himself with a mirror, a scalpel, a jeweler's saw, a suture kit, and a bunsen burner to sterilize things as needed. He only passed out three times during the bloody procedure, and it had been almost a total success. Almost. Bill could still access his dreams, but the metal plate right over his temporal lobe prevented the spirit from reading his thoughts or possessing him.

Theoretically, there was no reason he wouldn't be able to perform the same surgery on Stanley and the twins (and unlike when he did it on himself, he could actually sedate them), but it was still a risky, messy business. Plus the children weren't done growing yet, which would complicate things further. Still, it could be the only way to really protect them.

Ford pulled out a new sheet of draft paper, grabbed one of his anatomy books off the shelf, and made a quick sketch of a pre-teen's skull. Beside it, he sketched an adult skull, then drew points of reference on both, noting how the bone grew and changed. Perhaps he could place the metal plate so that it's position would not be disturbed by the bones as they grew. It needed to stay perfectly centered over the temporal lobe of the brain. ...Another option could be to place an unusually large plate; big enough that the maturing skull would be unable to shift it far enough to remove the protective effects.

Sedation would be difficult, though. He needed something that was easily obtainable, but wouldn't thin the blood. Fairy dust would do the trick if he mixed it with N,N-Dimethyltryptamine and allowed it to ferment. A popular candy by the name of Smile Dip had high enough levels of N,N-DMT to be of use, but getting a hold of the fairy dust would be prohibitively difficult—not to mention it would involve leaving the safety of the-

"Great Uncle Ford, what does this do?"

Ford startled badly and dropped his pen. He hadn't heard Dipper come down. ...He should have. No, he WOULD have—the elevator was loud. The kid had managed to get into the lab without using it. ...Now that Ford thought about it, this wasn't the first time he'd somehow managed to bypass all the security AND the elevator. Last time he had come down because he wanted to play DD&MD.

Dipper was perched on a wooden chair next to one of Ford's other work tables, holding a device in his hands and giving him a worried look. "Great Uncle Ford?"

This had to be approached carefully. If Bill had managed to compromise Dipper, he couldn't tip his hand. "Oh, that?" he replied, trying to keep his tone calm and friendly, "That's just something my assistant made back when we first started work on the portal" Ford studied the kid, trying to spot if anything was 'off'. His clothes were scuffed and dirty, but that just meant he'd been playing outside. The unicorn hair mixture SHOULD be offering perfect protection for the house, but if his nephew had wandered too far from the structure...

Dipper was looking at him intently, his eyes flicking back and forth for some reason. _He's checking my eyes,_ Ford realized with a smile, _Good boy!_

"It projects a beam of light, if hooked up to a sufficient power source. Sort of like a giant laser-pointer with a very focused beam."

"Can I see?" Dipper asked, relaxing a little.

"Sure," Ford replied, "You just need to hook it up to a power supply. There should be one in the drawer, there. No, not that one, the 12-volt with the yellow adapter on it. Make sure that you connect it correctly."

Ford turned back to his sketching while Dipper fiddled with the beam projector. That had been a fun project, back when he had first begin his work in Gravity Falls. He'd fought with it for days, trying to get it to work. Ultimately it was Fiddleford who had come up with an adapter that would enable the 12-volt battery to create a much higher difference in potential; something along the lines of 800 volts, if he remembered correctly.

He'd have to show Dipper more of their old gadgets. Learning how to use them would keep him entertained, and who knew? Maybe he might be able to use some of them to defend himself. Not that Dipper seemed to need any help in that regard. Ford couldn't be prouder of how quickly the boy had tried to protect that rift, how he hadn't hesitated at all to fire the memory-eraser to defend it. Ford wished he'd had half as much sense when he was doing his own investigations of Gravity Falls. Maybe things wouldn't have gotten this bad.

"Um, is it supposed to flicker like that?" Dipper asked. The beam projector was blinking wildly instead of sending out a steady beam. Ford recalled that he'd seen it do that before when they were first setting it up, but he couldn't remember how they had fixed it. The kid shifted uncomfortably in the wooden chair, "Also, I feel kind of weird."

"Hmm," Ford said, scratching his chin, "Maybe something in the adapter is on the fritz. We can take a look at it later."

Dipper reached over to the battery to unhook it, and apparently completed a circuit. It happened in an instant—Ford saw the electricity arc from the boy's hand to the metal work table, and a heartbeat later he had been knocked out of his chair and the beam projector was laying on the floor. The good news, though, was that Dipper was coughing and spluttering and whining a little. _He's fine_ , Ford decided, _If his heart had stopped, he wouldn't be making that noise._

"Looks like the contacts were hooked up backwards," Ford said, being sure to ground himself before disconnecting the battery, "You hooked positive to positive, instead of positive to negative. Since you were sitting in the wooden chair, you were insulated from the floor, which caused a difference of electric potential to build up. Of course, that discharged once you touched the metal table."

Dipper was just giving him a bleary-eyed look, as if Ford was speaking a different language. That was a bit concerning—these were the very basic physics of electricity; undergrad stuff. Dipper should have seen this all at school, right? ...Then again, maybe he was getting worried over nothing. 800 volts was enough to stun most anyone, even at low amperage.

He reached down, picked Dipper up by the scruff of his vest, and set him back on unsteady feet. "There you go. Say, what size hat do you wear?"

"I-I think they're one size fits all," he stammered. "...I think I burned my hand."

"Here, let me see," Ford said, kneeling down and holding out his hand. Dipper hesitated for a moment, then offered his own hand, palm-side up. Faint red lines stood out against the pale skin of his palm; classic Lichtenburg figures from the electrical discharge. The pattern almost looked like a fractal. Very cool, but Ford also imagined it was probably pretty painful.

He stood up, and gave Dipper an affectionate pat on the head, and started to herd him back upstairs."Those don't look too bad; I have a feeling a bit of aloe will fix that right up. Why don't you show me where your Grunkle Stan keeps the first aid kit?"

With any luck, he could get the kid patched up and get back to work without running into Stanley. If his brother found out that Dipper had managed to shock himself down in the lab, Ford would likely never hear the end of it.


End file.
